


Coda

by DratTheRat



Series: Friends and Lovers [4]
Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Bittersweet, Dreams, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Memories, Multi, Past Canonical Character Deaths, Regret, Smut, Survivor Guilt, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:45:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DratTheRat/pseuds/DratTheRat
Summary: As advertised.  Years after the events inFriends and Lovers, Roland fails to forgive himself for any slight he ever made against his poor, dead friends.  Eddie has a more positive attitude.Some references to events in the previous three stories.  May or may not stand alone.





	1. Now

Eddie and Susannah move away from the campfire, but they are hardly trying to hide what they are doing. They are quiet enough that Roland guesses young Jake’s ears are not assailed with the sounds of adult urges, and he does not think his touch is such that his mind will be drawn into their lovemaking against his will. He certainly hopes not. Wakeful, he sits by the fire long enough for his companions to return, and then he takes first watch. He will wake Eddie in two hours.

Eddie is very like Cuthbert with his hot temper and his easy loving kindness and his passion for another member of their small ka-tet. He is like Cuthbert, but he did not grow up in Gilead with Roland, so he does something Cuthbert never would have dreamed.

When Roland wakes him for his watch, he crawls reluctantly from his wife’s arms and leads Roland a little ways away and touches Roland’s face and says, “You know we love you, right? You know that you don’t have to be alone.”

Without the intimate caress it might be easy to pass off as a more Cuthbert-like plea to share his thoughts in conversation, but with that touch . . . this is a proposition. Roland is at a loss for words.

“I don’t know if you like . . .” Eddie finishes his thought with a loose hand gesture that takes in his pallid, compact, male body and Susannah’s rich, brown curves before he forges on, more jittery than Cuthbert but as talkative. “Well, anyway, we’ve got pretty much all the stuff between us, and we’re what’s here, yeah? We’ve talked it over, and you ought to join us - sometimes, anyway.”

“To join you.” Was this the conversation that had taken place that fateful time Roland had caught them at it? What was it Cuthbert had said of Jamie? Something about loneliness and sharing love.

“Well, yeah,” Eddie goes on, “We're all consenting adults, right?”

“I could not.” Roland's voice comes out too harsh. More softly, he adds, “I am your dinh.”

Eddie blows out a puff of air and rolls his eyes. “Oh come on, Roland, don't give me that crap. There's only four of us - five, with Oy, and we're already tangled up emotionally. What did you call it? Khef? A little fuck and suck is hardly going to blow it all to hell. Suze and I love each other so much, and we want to share it with you. How can that be so wrong with all this ka stuff you keep telling us about?”

The youngster's reasoning is sound, and it pains Ronald to realize it. All the more reason why he must decline. “No, Eddie.”

“No, Eddie, what? That wasn't a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.”

Roland's smile is involuntary, and he puts an end to it immediately. “No, Eddie, I will not go to bed with you.”

“There's hardly a bed.”

“I am not joking!” Roland snaps.

Just like Cuthbert before him, Eddie refuses to give in. He looks him in the eyes. “Give me a real reason, then.”

Roland tires another tactic. “Is it your habit, then, to lie with men?”

Eddie laughs a little to himself. “My habit? God, no. I'm a breast man all the way. But don't forget I was a junkie when you met me. There were times I would have done just about anything with anybody for a fix, and a couple of times I did. Wasn't so bad, and I bet it would be way better with you. There's love between us and all that. But, if that's not your thing, I can just be there. I mean, she is my wife.”

Roland avoids the second half of Eddie's statement. He does not care for Eddie's junkie days, but he knows all about those times when your own body is the only thing you have to give. “I have paid with my flesh before, with women. And,” it must be ka or khef that drives him to confide, “Cuthbert - Cuthbert was very handsome; he was always their first pick. He told me once, long after the fact - the night before he died . . . He admitted that, one time his body bought us shelter, he had let the widow use her longstick on him. Do you understand?”

Eddie seems to turn the term over a few times in his mind. He comes up with a foreign word: “A dildo?” He laughs a little, edges closer, whispers, “With women, I've had fingers but not that. I've been frisked there, too, but never . . .”

Roland had been horrified by Cuthbert's confession, but he does his best not to convey that now. “He said it was the price of watching her use it on herself. ‘It was a fair negotiation’ - these were his words - ‘and both parties were well satisfied.’”

Now, Eddie laughs harder, and he covers his mouth to muffle the sound. “What's the word for guys like that?”

Roland tenses. He can think of several, some of which he had called Cuthbert to his face.

“A hedonist?” Eddie finishes.

Roland shakes his head. “I do not know that word.”

“I should ask Susannah to be sure. I think it means someone who makes pleasure a big priority.”

“Oh.” Of course Eddie had not been thinking of an insult or a slur. He had just offered for Roland to lie with him and his wife. “I reckon that word might apply. Cuthbert was very disciplined in some respects - he was a gunslinger - but pleasure was important to him - his and others’ also.”

Eddie nods.

It is time for Roland to contribute a confession if his own. “I cannot lie with you and Susannah because it would not be fair to him.”

Eddie makes a scrunched in kind of face that borders on a grimace. He opens his mouth for a long time before he speaks. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but Cuthbert’s dead.” 

And now Eddie thinks Cuthbert was Roland’s lover. If this is revenge, then it is sick. He wonders whether Cuthbert wished it on him.

When Roland does not speak, Eddie goes on. “I’m sorry, man, but it’s the truth. It sounds like he had a lot of love. I don’t think he would begrudge you . . .”

“Stop.”

Eddie complies. He has a pouty look about him now. 

Would Cuthbert begrudge Roland taking pleasure with his new ka-tet? He ought to. If he did not, it would be because he felt that he was in the wrong - an illusion Roland had perpetuated. “He might not,” Roland tells Eddie, “Because I was his dinh and also because he was too forgiving. Others might, and they would not be wrong. I wronged him.”

Eddie’s pout is gone, and now he wears one of those expressions that perfectly echoes Cuthbert: his face is mostly slack, his mouth a little open, his eyebrows partly raised and partly furrowed. It is a thinking face.

“Ka would judge me a hypocrite,” Roland adds.

“Oh.” Eddie has got it now - the truth or something close to it. Unfortunately, once again like Bert, he will not let the subject drop. “Tell me what happened.”

Roland has been Eddie’s confessor, working out of him the true damage done to his psyche by his brother, and Roland has told stories to his whole ka-tet before, which, he is sure, conveyed at least some sense of guilt, but this . . . in olden days, the only friend he might have confessed to was Cuthbert, and ka and pride and foolishness had all prevented him from telling Cuthbert this.

“That night, after Alain was gone and we were halfway to the very end, I asked, ‘How long?’ He said that Al had been in love with him since he was old enough to understand the feeling, and then he told me all about the widow with the longstick, and he grinned as though the whole thing were a joke. Cuthbert talked constantly, but when it was not criticism or advice it tended to be nonsense. He rarely shared his inner thoughts. With me.”

“Ka’s joke? Kaka?”

“Maybe. His humor was not always something that I understood.”

“He didn’t like to come right out and say things.”

“He was a brilliant tactician. Other times . . . the plan speaking came only when his temper got the better of him, which was rarer than I have implied.”

“Dramatic stuff makes the best stories,” Eddie agrees. He puts his thinking face back on, and Roland has to bite his tongue to stop himself from telling him, again, he is like Cuthbert. By the second comparison, Eddie was already tired of hearing it, and it will not help this conversation now.

“You have that over him,” he says instead. “You do not speak in riddles.” What Eddie considers riddles would be more accurately classified as jokes, and Cuthbert would have liked them.

“Well, that’s something.” 

Roland can tell that he was right about how much his companion resents the ongoing comparison. He resolves to be more sparing with such remarks in future; although, inside his mind, they will not stop. At least the physical resemblance is minimal - long nose, arched brows, thin lips, but Eddie’s smile is not crooked, and his hair is darker - black, like Roland’s - and his eyes are lighter - hazel, like no one significant from Roland’s past - and he is not so tall and lanky, rather: more compact - a body built for different kinds of quickness.

Again he speaks over Roland’s silence. “So, he didn’t come right out, but he implied. He implied he knew how Alain felt about him and that maybe he felt the same but that it was a long time before he figured out he liked it up the ass.”

Roland chokes.

“Which was a weird thing to imply. I mean, you said just now that he was handsome, and, before, I got the impression he was more than. You know, not just handsome - pretty. So there’s stereotypes, but why would he have to bottom, right? I get the feeling that your first ka-tet was more, um, regimented? Military? And he outranked Alain?” He forges on before Roland can answer. “Why not the other way around? And why would they have to do that at all if Cuthbert didn’t want?”

Eddie may have found the crux of the problem. “I believe Alain would gladly have taken whatever Cuthbert was willing to give.”

“And he gave everything.”

Roland sighs. “It was his nature.” And that is something Eddie clearly understands. He has that same passion, that same desire to be needed and to please. This conversation began with Eddie offering Roland everything - his body, his wife.

“Roland.” Eddie's voice is little more than a whisper. “I need to hear the rest.”


	2. Then

It would have been difficult to pinpoint whether Jamie was a quieter man than he had been a boy, so Roland had not tried. Most of the time, he privately appreciated Jamie’s tendency to keep his mouth shut. He never spoke unless he felt it absolutely necessary, and each one of them respected that. Even Cuthbert, who almost never let Roland off so easily, seemed well content if he could earn a silent smile.

“Eight months,” Jamie said. Apparently, he was unsatisfied with Cuthbert’s meandering response and lurid anecdote. 

Cuthbert caught his eye, and his false jocularity collapsed. He wrapped his arms around his knees and stared down at oncoming death camped in the valley far below. 

Roland had imagined a much lengthier affair. He was not a bit surprised by Jamie’s bitter honesty. Their last and only other conversation on the subject had been months ago but memorable:

To take a piss politely Roland invariably had to leave the three of them alone. “I shall return directly,” he had promised.

On his way back, moments later, he met Jamie walking the other way. This meant Alain and Cuthbert were alone, just out of sight. He nodded at Jamie and edged over to the side so they could share the aisle in between the trees. 

Jamie did not likewise sidestep. With his broad shoulders, he blocked Roland’s path, and he said, “I would speak with you.” He extended one long arm and spread out his large hand in invitation to go back, away from camp instead of towards it.

“You wish to speak dandinh?”

Jamie smiled, but it was not one that would have pleased Cuthbert. This smile was closed-mouthed, which was to be expected, but it was over-stretched, almost sardonic. “It is not my heart for which I am concerned.”

This rankled Roland, but he did comply; it was a rare request. He strode a little ways through the sparse wood until he came to a second clearing, smaller than the one where they had made their camp. In spite of the autumn chill, it was a pleasant place, and the afternoon sun shone on his face as it snuck through the gap between the trees. He stopped and turned and stretched out his own arm in invitation.

Jamie did not mince words: “To what did he agree?”

“I do not know what you mean.” Roland spoke carefully to keep the dread out of his voice. The statement was not a complete lie; he suspected, but he was not absolutely certain.

Jamie’s jaw tightened, but his voice was not snide, and the grim smile did not come back. “To what did Cuthbert agree on the day you caught the three of us together?”

Now it was Roland’s turn to grit his teeth. “To discretion. Did he . . .” He had disliked Jamie’s involvement in the conflict from the start and meant to ask if Cuthbert had recruited him to be his advocate, but Jamie spoke on top of him.

“You realize you have made that impossible.” 

Not a question, and a brazen interruption, too. Roland was shocked. 

Jamie clarified. “The physical component of their love is sacrificed to this ‘discretion.’”

“And now you have drawn me away. What are they doing?” The physical component of their love, indeed.

“Fucking each other’s brains out if they have an ounce of sense.” Jamie was full of surprises.

“Did you promise to delay me here?”

“What I have said and done is of no consequence.”

“DeCurry, you are out of line!”

“No!” Jamie’s pale face went pink. “You are. You are in breach of your agreement.”

His agreement with Cuthbert had been very plain. This was absurd. “I never claimed to set aside the time for them to break the laws of nature.”

Jamie’s eyes narrowed. He plainly took offense at Roland’s choice of words, but he stuck to his original point. “No,” he admitted, softer than before. “No, of course not. But you have changed your habits.”

Roland was ready to deny this, too, but he thought better of it. Within a week of the fateful confrontation, Roland had awakened in the night at sometime during Cuthbert’s watch. Cuthbert had been standing tall, facing away from camp, Alain Johns nowhere to be seen, at least not under cover of darkness.

“Alain?” Roland had inquired in a whisper, lest he awaken Jamie, too.

“Stepped away,” Cuthbert had whispered back.

And did that mean that he had gone to take a piss or that he was there, hiding, on his knees in front of Cuthbert in the dark? That was not the way that it had been that time Roland had seen but . . . He had forced his body into sleep and dreamed disturbing dreams of hot skin sluiced with chilly water, kisses he would never share, and Cuthbert’s stricken face. 

Since then, he realized, his gruesome curiosity had made him cruel. On the road, he rarely left the two or even three of them alone. Worse still, in inns and brothels where it ought to have been easy for the two of them to share a girl or take a room all by themselves, Roland, who had, before, ever been first to take a gilly off to bed, had found himself lingering in common spaces just to see what they would do. 

Because of his own practice, he did not know Cuthbert’s usual routine, if he had ever had one. Cuthbert had one now. After the first time, in an inn, when he sat chatting late with the whole group, smiling just a little bit less widely than his usual wont and sneaking hard glances at Roland, he had avoided such a stalemate by retiring relatively early, sometimes to a bunk room that they all could share, more often with a girl. 

With his good looks and charming smile, Cuthbert had no trouble leading a string of comely ladies of varying degrees of worldliness and innocence to bed, and Alain smiled gamely at him every time as he went. Of course, then, this had made Roland remember Alain’s gift and wonder whether he enjoyed the benefits of Cuthbert’s trysts although they were not touching, physically. 

To take his mind off that idea, he had returned to his original routine and packed in as much fucking as he could when opportunity arose. Now, however, Cuthbert invariably chose a woman first, and Roland always checked in on him afterwards, allowing no opportunity for Alain to sneak into Cuthbert’s room and fuck him after he was finished with his whore. “I like it very much,” Cuthbert had said. The memory made Roland ill, and that sick feeling spread as he considered Jamie’s accusation. 

Was he in breach? He had promised not to raise the subject if Cuthbert were discreet, but Jamie’s observation was correct: he certainly had changed his habits. 

“I did not pardon him,” Roland said, at last, to Jamie, who had stood, patient and silent, all through Roland’s period of consideration. 

“But neither did you command him to desist.”

“Jamie, I have the proof of my own eyes that your views on this matter differ mightily from mine.”

Jamie had the decency to look down at his boots. “That is my fault. I intimated that I knew about them. I wished to share with them how their love made me think of Mary - the girl I was to wed at home in Gilead. I did not ask . . . nor expect . . . The original offer was to watch, but Cuthbert, he gets caught up in the moment, in his pleasures . . .” He trailed off. 

This confession was unexpected. Jamie rarely shared his thoughts and memories, and Roland could begin to form a picture in his mind of how that strange encounter might have come to be. Bert, so sentimental in his way, might have been very touched by Jamie’s words, and Al, so empathetic, might have longed to ease his pain with physical affection. “This is an excuse for their carelessness alone.”

“Say true, but it pains me to be the reason you found out.”

Roland grimaced. Such secrets only damaged a ka-tet. “It is better that I know.”

“I disagree.”

At this bald statement, Roland heaved a heavy sigh. He had hurt Cuthbert that day and, perhaps, since, but he was in the right. Already he had been more than magnanimous in asking as a friend, not Cuthbert's dinh, for him to cease his whorish habit with Alain, knowing, by Cuthbert's own admission, that a friend's request did not carry enough weight to force an end to the affair. The conflict had not been resolved as they pretended. It festered - Cuthbert, frustrated, unable to lie with his lover; Roland, constantly suspicious, unable to keep the matter from his mind. 

“I am not in the wrong,” Roland reminded Jamie.

Jamie shrugged. On this he also disagreed, but he needed no words to say it.

“What would you have me do?”

“Return to your old pattern. Leave them be.”

When they returned to the clearing, Cuthbert was half dozing by the fire, and Alain was poking at a stew that he had set to simmer. “Soon enough,” Al promised.

Soon enough, it had mattered very little, but Roland had been careful after that. When his mind longed for private contemplation, he had excused himself from camp as always was his wont before. The next time they were at an inn, he had deliberately bought another round for Jamie, Bert, and Al before he chose a girl and left them to finish their drinks. His curiosity and his disapproval never faltered, but he told himself he could proud of just how tolerant he was, how he was more than keeping his side of the bargain, now. 

And, of course, Cuthbert kept his own side to his death. That final bloodsoaked night before that fateful, much bloodier dawn, it had been Jamie and not he who had been indiscreet.


	3. The Wee Hours

Roland tells the story back to front. He glosses over what exactly he had seen, but he is unforgiving in his account of his confrontation with the famous Cuthbert afterwards and in the poor excuses he had made for fucking up his love life. 

Eddie feels himself frowning throughout. He can’t exactly blame the guy for his reaction - what his friends, all three of them, it seems, were up to in the stream is hardly more acceptable in Eddie’s where and when. Considering how Roland was brought up and how much stock he still puts in all those old traditions of that long gone place, Eddie’s pretty impressed he gave Cuthbert any leeway at all.

He’d loved him, though, hadn’t he? Loved him so much he couldn’t shake his death off even now. If fucking famous Cuthbert were alive right now, Roland would probably still be asking him to be discreet. He probably would have told Eddie, “Nah, threesomes aren’t for me,” and Cuthbert would have watched them, sneaky bastard, and come whispering to Eddie afterwards that he was up for anything.

Eddie doesn’t get a chance to say any of this. When Roland finishes his story with the grim reminder that all three of them are fucking dead, he moseys off to marinade in his moroseness (or to sleep), and Eddie’s left there turning all of his shit over in his head and wondering how someone who’s been dead so long won’t ever fucking die.

When it’s Susannah’s turn to watch, Eddie wakes her with a kiss and lies down next to her as she sits up, alert. With his back against her warm thigh and her hand upon his neck, he sleeps. He dreams.

In his dream, he is likewise as warm and comfortable as he has ever been since Roland tugged him through that magic door. There is a fire burning, and Eddie is leaning back on his elbows with his knees up, taking in its heat. His eyes are drifting closed. Every so often, his lids lift, and he sees someone else. Not someone whom he knows in waking life, but somebody who, in this dream, is intimately familiar. It is a man, about his own age, with a wild mop of shoulder-length blonde curls. He is cooking. 

On the fire, there is a soot black pot, and from it wafts the smell of boiling fowl and herbs. Eddie is not helping him cook; he knows he is the worst at this of all of them, capable of creating sustenance but almost never tenderness or flavor. He also knows he felled the bird, however, and without wasting a bullet, so he takes in the warmth and watches the man cook.

Eddie stares at his companion’s hands. How strong and sure they are. How wonderful they would feel on his body. He smiles to himself, letting his arousal mingle with the warmth of the fire, then he shakes the thought away and lets his eyes drift closed again. He hears the man approach. One of those strong hands settles on his neck, just like Susannah’s slimmer one is resting on his real, sleeping body.

“Are you tempted?” The familiar/unfamiliar voice is little more than a whisper. It is a spoken word, but it sinks deep in Eddie’s mind as though it were placed there by magic. He enjoys the feeling.

“Always tempted.” He opens his eyes. The blonde man is right there, of course. His eyes are kind and blue, the same shape as Susannah’s brown ones. In their depths, he sees the same desire, the same love.

The blonde man’s warm hand slides around the back of Eddie’s head, and now it is as warm there as it is on Eddie’s knees and feet and Eddie’s eager groin. He kisses him softly, and Eddie responds, languid at first, then hungry. That big, strong hand is holding him in place, so when he doesn’t dare continue any longer, he is forced to give the blonde man’s solid chest a little shove. He lets him go and stops at once and hunkers in a crouch.

“That was delicious. Thankee once and thankee twice. We haven’t time for more.” Eddie feels himself speak these words. His voice is strange, but, in his dream, he is not bothered. Dreams are strange.

“This time we have.” There is a sparkle in the blonde man’s pretty eye.

“What say you?” Eddie whispers; then, he understands. He is less pleased now than he was. “Jamie should mind his business. It is not his place or yours to shield me from the consequences of my own decisions.”

The blonde man makes a face at him but does not argue. “Shut your mouth,” he says instead, and Eddie does, and Eddie shivers even though, for once, he isn’t cold.

The blonde man kisses him again, and Eddie keeps his mouth shut because that’s the sort of humor he enjoys, and he is smiling with his closed lips, and the other man is smiling, too.

“Oh, you’re not going to frustrate me. I want to suck on something other than your tongue.” The other man crawls over him and kisses down his chest. He tugs his shirt out of his pants so he can touch his lips to skin. He opens Eddie’s pants enough to get his cock out, and then his cock is hot inside his wicked mouth, and Eddie hopes that he is right - he usually is - and they will not be caught this time. “We won’t.” The blonde man interrupts his suck to tell him. “Shut your mind, too, if you have to. Better yet, come quickly.”

Eddie nods down at him. He pushes all his fretting to the back part of his mind and concentrates on pleasure. Now, he is delirious. His lover squeezes his ass, and Eddie thrusts into his mouth because he knows that he can take it. His orgasm is strange, the way they are in dreams, an echo of a half remembered pleasurable sensation that is not enough to make his real body come. “You?”

“I borrowed yours. No mess.”

“Another time,” Eddie promises. He is not really angry with Jamie. If he insists on interfering, maybe he can have Alain inside him once again before the end. He buttons himself up, and the blonde man, Alain Johns, goes back to his competent stew.

Eddie wakes to find Susannah absent. It is Jake’s watch, now, and she is waking him. Eddie gives the boy a wave and yawns and waits for Suze to crawl back over to him and then takes her in his arms. He dreams the dream again.

This time, it is Susannah sucking him, and Alain keeps making stew. He throws a glance at them every so often until Eddie beckons him over.

“You’re not him,” Alain complains. 

“I was last time. You should join us, anyway.”


	4. Tomorrow Night

All through the next night’s dinner, Jake is antsy, swift and meager though the meal is. 

“Do you sense trouble?” Roland asks.

The boy stops fidgeting and looks at Roland, suddenly focused and still. It is jarring, sometimes, to see him transform so immediately from child to gunslinger.

“Trouble? No . . .” His wide blue eyes wander around the group. “Will I be safe if I go for a walk? A long one?” 

Roland’s heart constricts. The previous night’s conversation has been turning around in his head all day, and now he guesses with anticipation and with dread what it may be Jake senses. “Long, if you like, but not too far.” It pleases him how little of his unaccustomed nervousness creeps into his firm voice. “So long as you are armed and sense no trouble.”

Jake nods and pats his weapon, scratches Oy behind his ear, and almost instantly departs, the bumbler jogging happily beside him.

Roland watches him go, and then he watches the leaves wave in the empty woods when he is out of sight. He does not turn around until the dreaded but inevitable sound of Eddie’s voice:

“I dreamed about them.” 

Roland sighs and meets his eyes. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed the time that Jamie stopped you in the woods. I dreamed that I was Cuthbert, and Alain was making stew. I was warm and sleepy, then he came and kissed me and told me we had more time that usual. I complained about Jamie . . . let me remember the words. I said, ‘Jamie should mind his business. It is not his place or yours to shield me from the consequences of my own decisions.’”

Roland winces.

“Yeah, well, anyway, Alain told me to shut up, and then he sucked me off. He knew what he was doing.” Eddie smiles at the memory. “I don’t think they were unhappy. And then, when you changed your habits back like Jamie asked, I think that they were grateful. Cuthbert, anyway. I didn’t dream about that, but I dreamed some of his thoughts. You might have hurt him, but he understood. He would have been grateful.”

“Grateful,” Roland repeats. What a disgusting thought.

“Yeah.”

“And are you grateful, the two of you?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’d be pissed if you tried to make us stop seeing each other, but I’m grateful that you give us time. It’s tricky with no private place to go to.”

“I called him a whore.”

“Yeah? Well, I doubt he was grateful for that.”

Susannah breaks in. “I wish I could have seen. Your dream - I wish I could have seen it.”

Eddie grins at her. “After your watch, I dreamed again, and you were there, and I was me, and Alain complained I wasn’t Cuthbert, but he didn’t take much convincing. I’m pretty sure that one was mine.”

Her laugh is warm and throaty. “You’re a good find, Eddie Dean.”

“I like to think so.” Smirking, cocky, and irreverent, just like Bert before him, he kisses his wife and turns to Roland. “I think Cuthbert would think so, too. I think he would be glad to know you’d changed your mind about him and Alain.”

“Too late.”

Eddie frowns and closes his eyes. Perhaps he is remembering the feel of Cuthbert’s mind around his in his dream. 

Susannah runs her fingers through his hair and pulls his head against her breast. She looks at Roland hard with deep, brown eyes. Bert’s eyes had been like that. “It’s not too late for you.” 

With Eddie cradled to her chest, she leans forward, and Roland lets her kiss him. It is a gentle kiss and undemanding. When she pulls back, Eddie’s eyes are open. He tips his chin up, and she bends her head to kiss him, just as softly. 

Afterwards, he sits up straight and turns to Roland once again. “I’ve sucked cock,” he admits, “but I’ve never kissed a man, unless you count my dream.”

Roland shakes his head. 

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, please.” This is Susannah. Roland watches her run a hand down in between her breasts to press against her fabric enclosed crotch.

“The idea arouses you?” Roland asks carefully.

“Two girls together - do you like that thought?” She counters.

Roland remembers one bizarre occasion, before That Day and long before Cuthbert and Alain became what they became. Gilead was not yet long gone, and Roland's spirits had been heavy and his appetites borderline nonexistent. In a tavern full of painted whores, Cuthbert had chosen two, who looked nothing like Susan, and had paid for both and tugged on Roland’s arm until he followed him upstairs.

“My friend’s a gloomy fellow,” he had told the ladies. “Give us a show, won’t you, to get him started?”

One of the girls had started taking her clothes off, twirling her hips seductively. The other had crawled into Cuthbert’s lap and kissed him, open mouthed, and then sunk to the floor and taken out his cock. He had let her get her lips around it before saying, “Not that kind of show,” and shooing her off toward the bed.

The show had been educational, and it had been easy to get caught up in Cuthbert’s worldly commentary. In the end, they had fucked the two girls side by side and sent them on their way and slept together, chaste and naked, in the bed. 

“I am not inclined to such fantasies,” Roland says stiffly. “But,” he breathes deeply before his next stilted confession, “Cuthbert once arranged a demonstration for the two of us. It had the effect he intended.”

Eddie is consumed by giggles. 

Susannah slides her hand into his hair. Her dark eyes flash. “That was before they got together?”

“Say true. I should have guessed about him then. He made it clear he was experienced in things we had been taught were untoward, but they were women. I was shocked, but . . .”

“But you liked how superior to him it made you feel,” Susannah guesses.

“And it turned you on,” Eddie adds, serious, again, at last. “The girls together, and him, too, telling you things, and maybe showing you.” He licks his lips.

“I never wished that Cuthbert was my lover.”

“Maybe not. But weren’t you jealous, though, that they invited Jamie and not you?”

“Was I?” Roland is still unsure. “Jealous that they trusted him, perhaps. And guilty, now, that they were right.”

“I want what they offered him,” Susannah whispers, “I want to watch the two of you together.”

“Fuck, Suze,” Eddie moans. “Whatever you want.”

Roland shakes his head. “I have misgivings, already, about joining you. And when I dream, I dream of sex with women.”

“Yeah, me too,” Eddie agrees.

“You contradict yourself.”

“Not really. That was Cuthbert’s memory. You know I get those funny dreams sometimes. You put me in his place, you know? Going on the way you do about how much I’m like him. Guess you shoved his ghost right into my subconscious. You’ll let me kiss you now, right?”

Roland sits very still but does not deny Eddie. Eddie, who glances back over his shoulder at his wife and then crawls all the way up on his knees and touches Roland’s cheek like he had done when he proposed this a lifetime ago last night. He touches Roland’s lips with his.

“Pathetic,” Susannah scoffs.

Gingerly, Eddie tries again. He presses harder with his lips this time and parts them. His tongue touches Roland’s lips, and Roland clamps them tighter closed. When the tongue slips back where it belongs, however, he allows his lips to part a little and interlock with Eddie’s, finally. It is mostly like kissing a woman, and he hopes Susannah is pleased.

“Better,” she acknowledges.

Eddie spins around on his knees. “Oh, Suze, I want a kiss like the one Alain gave Cuthbert in my dream. Give me your hand.”

With an indulgent smile, she complies, and Eddie snakes her hand around the back of his neck and leans back against it.

“Like this.”

Susannah glances once at Roland, then complies. She devours Eddie’s moans and holds his head in place. 

“What was that word you used?” Roland puts in as the hungry kiss goes on and on. “The one that you called Cuthbert?”

Susannah pulls back to let him answer. 

“Hedonist,” Eddie breathes. “Is that right, Suze?”

“Mmm hmm.” She smiles at him again, then pulls him back against her chest again and turns to Roland. “What’s your pleasure, then, if you won’t suck each other’s little white dicks for me?”

“I’d do it,” Eddie puts in.

“Shush.” She moves a hand from his bicep to his mouth, and he moans and licks her fingers until she lets him suck on them. Her arousal is plain in her face.

Roland is at a loss. He wants to make them happy, wants a release for his own body, now fully aroused, but he does not want to come inside his friend’s wife, and he does not want Eddie’s mouth on him and certainly not the other way around. He remembers Jamie’s admission that the first offer had been for him to watch. Would Eddie and Susannah honor that, or would Eddie, like Cuthbert, be uncontent until he fully joined them?

Eddie pulls Susannah’s fingers out of his mouth and relaxes back against her. Her full breasts strain against her tunic and brush the top of his head. He strokes the back of one hand along a hard nipple. “What if you had found them the other way around?”

“I cry your pardon?” Roland’s saliva disappears.

“What if it was Cuthbert with his cock up Alain’s ass?”

Susannah’s pupils are huge. 

“That would still have gone against our teaching.”

“Not so bad, though, right? That’s why you were so angry - he was next in line to you.”

“In part,” Roland admits. The mental image he has summoned of the opposite arrangement (without Jamie, at least) is shockingly arousing, fueled, in part, by the true memory of Cuthbert, on the bed beside him, fucking his own girl.

“So,” Eddie continues, “Suze and I aren’t all lined up like that, but you are dinh. So you could be inside me while I’m in her, and we’re sorted.”

“Sorted,” Roland echoes.

Susannah is smirking at him, the rougher part of her persona showing through. She longs to see them at it.

Eddie, on the other hand, is all wide eyes and earnestness. He wants to be sure everyone is pleased. 

“You said that you have not done that before,” Roland reminds him.

“I’ll try anything once.” Eddie grins. Then, he clutches his head and closes his eyes and arches his back. 

Concerned, Susannah strokes his face.

“Well, fuck,” Eddie whispers when he comes back seconds later. “He said to the lady with the dildo.” He is still writhing in what must be pleasure, and he palms himself now through his pants. “Do it this one time, Roland, please!”

Susannah’s wicked smirk is back. “Such a good find.” She leans over him.

Eddie removes his hand from his hard member, clearly visible straining against his jeans. He tugs at his wife’s tunic, and it comes off over her head. Her breasts dangle in his face while she undoes his fly. He shucks the pants off, kicking in frustration when they stick around his feet.

Roland takes in the sight: the contrast in their shapes and skin, their palpable want, the temptation of curiosity. He helps Eddie pull off his moccasins and jeans.

“I’ll get him ready for you, Roland,” Susannah says. Gently, she dumps Eddie on the ground and kisses down his naked body. “Oh my pretty boy, my man. Are you a hedonist, too?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie admits. “I’ve been an addict.”

“Love can have the same symptoms,” Roland muses. He remembers his own indiscretion with Susan - how he had continued, much less covertly than he had imagined, against his friends’ wishes and against his better judgment. 

“He loved it once he tried it, didn’t he,” Eddie goes on. “He loved Alain all soft and sweet and lovey dovey, but he loved for him to fuck him, too. Do you think I’ll love it like that?”

Susannah has taken her bottoms off, now. And she is touching herself. Even with Eddie’s babble, Roland can hear the squelch of her juices as she dips her fingers in and spreads her wet on Eddie’s hole.

“Oh, I think you’ll like it, love,” she tells Eddie. “But I don’t think you’ll want it like he did.”

He lifts his hand to touch her cheek. “Because I’m in love with you.”

“That’s right, babe. And because you’re not him.”

His smile is so sweet, so like Cuthbert’s even though it is not crooked, that Roland has to bite his tongue not to suggest that she is wrong. They are cut from the same cloth.

“Go ahead, Suze, this much I’ve done before.”

“Oh, I know, baby.” She sticks a finger in.

The two of them have done this before, together, Roland realizes. He does his best not to discern the words they speak to one another during or their whispered, post love chatter, but he is suddenly curious whether their offer of a threesome was devised with her two or three fingers pressed inside him. He thinks of Cuthbert with the widow, wide eyed, open to new pleasures, perhaps even imagining her longstick were Al’s cock. Eddie is similarly wide eyed now, watching Susannah first, then Roland. 

“On your knees, honey,” Susannah prompts, giving Eddie’s butt a little slap. Roland’s reverie must have carried him through her preparations. To him, Susannah says, “Now, I’m not gonna be cheated out of watching just a little.” She gives a kiss to Eddie’s rump.

Roland strips off his clothes. He is aroused, of course, but nervous and guilty still. “Eddie, are you certain? I am touched by your offer, but you must know Cuthbert did not want me thus.”

“Like Suze said, I’m not him. I wouldn’t have offered if I couldn’t take the consequences. Want you to feel good. I’m so hard for how bad Susannah wants to see you fuck me. Jesus fuck.”

Roland nods. Before he loses his nerves and his erection to worry, he slicks his cock with spit and shoves it in the prepared hole.

Eddie and Susannah gasp in unison, and Eddie lets loose a string of curses. He is breathing heavily.

“Oh does it hurt?” Susannah teases. “Can’t you take a little fuck?” She is leaning back on one arm, stroking her swollen clit. Eddie’s discomfort does not seem to bother her at all.

“Christ fuck it fucking does hurt, yes,” Eddie spits out. “You like that? You wanna get yourself a . . . a longstick, tie it round your waist, and hurt me? I could carve one for us - one that goes inside you, too, so you can fuck yourself at the same time. You hear me? Go fuck yourself!” He begins laughing.

Roland continues to thrust very slowly. The experience is surreal, but Eddie is not objecting, and Roland's erection is not bothered by his obvious discomfort.

“Fuck, the tolerance for pain he must have had to crave this,” Eddie muses. “It’s nice, though, too, it’s . . .” he stiffens for a moment, then pushes back on Roland’s cock and begins to talk in a steady stream: “They had oil the first time, and a bunch of times after that. Then they ran out, and it did hurt, but not like this because he was more used to it. When they had oil, they did try the other way around some, but not after, and he did love it - his cock in his ass. He let go. His mind - it never stopped, so much thinking and planning and imagining and watching and worrying and loving, and with Al inside him he was only Cuthbert, and only the loving was left. I’m not him; I’m not him; I’m not him; I’m not him. Let’s do it anyway. Suze, have you seen enough? The three of us . . . I want . . .”

“Shhhh.” Susannah brushes his hair from his forehead and kisses him carefully. “Roland, can you hold us both if he’s on top of you?”

Roland had never imagined such a position, but of course it seems well possible. “I reckon.” He pulls out and lays down on the soft earth and adds more spit to his cock. 

“This is gonna seem even stranger, somehow,” Eddie admits. He crawls over Roland and, straddling him, sinks down. 

It is strange to Roland, too. Somehow, he always thought this position was only for women. “Did they do it this way?” He wonders whether Eddie knows.

“Oh yeah,” he moans, adjusting himself on Roland’s cock. “Sometimes they did. Bert liked being on bottom, so Alain could really fuck him hard, but they did this, too. They even did it this way once with Al on top like I am now. Cuthbert . . . his hair was full of ants.” 

Eddie is experimenting with bouncing up and down on top of him now. Roland grabs his hips and slams up hard. Eddie throws his head back and moans. 

“Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

“You hold that spot,” Susannah says. She leans over to suck on Eddie’s cock, which had gone soft as soon as Roland thrust inside. It swells swiftly, and she climbs up on top of it, back to Eddie, so they both are facing Roland. 

It is difficult to move. Roland thrusts up again, and Susannah gyrates on top of Eddie, and he is making little, keening moans.

“God, he loved being in the middle. With girls, that time with Jamie . . . I think that’s the same. I think I love that, too. Someday, we could do this again.”

Roland comes first. The friction is extreme, Eddie is babbling, and each time Roland blinks he sees the memory of Cuthbert on the bed beside him, rolling, satiated, off his girl and smiling up at Roland while he finishes. He sees Cuthbert coming in Jamie’s hand, awkwardly turning to kiss Alain, behind him, deep inside him still. He hears his accusations: “What, jealous?” “You are asking, then?” Eddie is grinning at him.

After Roland comes, Susannah falls down on his chest, her nipples pressing against his. Eddie ejects his soft member and adjusts to thrust into Susannah more effectively while he still straddles Roland’s waist. She comes, and then Eddie does, too.

He kisses Roland before rolling to the ground. Susannah waits a moment longer, looking into Roland’s eyes, then rolls off, too, so her head rests on Eddie’s shoulder, and he winds his arms around her waist. They are a unit Roland is no longer part of.

“Was I jealous?” Roland asks. “I dreamed, sometimes, that I had asked or that they had invited, and those dreams angered me. Cuthbert made it very clear that he had given me too much to give this, as well.”

Susannah looks up at Eddie, and they share a glance.

“Whatever made me channel him is gone, thank God,” Eddie admits. “I don’t think it’ll be back, either. It’s out of my system, so to speak. But here’s what I think. I’ve been listening to you go on about the guy ever since you yanked me into your world. You think that I don’t pay attention when you talk? From what I’ve heard, you had the chance to have him, and you went for someone else instead, and, after that, he wasn’t about to let you break his heart. Later, he fell in love with somebody who loved him back - romantically - and you were jealous just like he had been when you met Susan. You were jealous ‘cause you were left out.”

Roland shakes his head. “I had no right!”

“Oh, hon, that isn’t how emotions work.”

“I used our father’s prejudice as an excuse.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “But here’s the thing: Suze and I know just how much it means to you to hold to your traditions, and he knew you a lot better than we do, I’d bet. You think where we come from people are all okay with love like that? There’s been a lot of things to open up my mind, but in my when people like him are dying because there’s a disease that spreads real easily through blood, and eveyone’s afraid. I’m fucking lucky not to have it from the needle, but sex'll do it, too - especially anal. The gays, they took the brunt of all the fear. I’m not saying it’s alright for people in my world or that you didn’t wrong him like you said, but don’t you see how touched he might have been that you’d let him continue on at all when it went against what you were taught?”

Roland grimaces. Once again, Eddie’s reasoning is sound enough, but it is a cold comfort. He had expected everything of Cuthbert - and Alain and Jamie, too. He should have given them more in return. In the end, he had not even been able to give them a decent burial. If he tells Eddie this, he will be full of still more comforting excuses. Instead, Roland focuses on one of Eddie’s words - a word he knows but not in this context. “What did you mean: ‘the gays?’”

Susannah answers, “In my when, that’s what men who liked to be with other men were starting to call themselves. Guess it caught on. It’s had a lot of meanings leading up to that. You’ve got it here?”

“Say true, for someone full of joy or free of care. I reckon Cuthbert would have liked it.”


End file.
